This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

They started kissing and Lucy DeCoutere said Jian Ghomeshi choked her with his hand for 10 seconds. Then slapped her three times. The Crown asked if it was consensual. “It’s impossible to consent to something you were not asked,” she told court.

On the summer weekend 13 years ago when Lucy DeCoutere alleges Jian Ghomeshi choked and slapped her in his Riverdale home they went on to attend a night-time barbecue and “cuddled” in a park after morning brunch.

Photos of the two at these social events were shown on the court’s jumbo screen in a day that ended with a classic Marie Henein shocker: There’s more to come.

“Do you want to tell his honour the real conversation? The one that you have not told anybody even today?” said Henein, Ghomeshi’s lawyer, addressing the composed DeCoutere. Henein on her feet, voice stern, moving a bit like her late mentor the famous trial lawyer, Eddie Greenspan, looking ready to pounce.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” DeCoutere told court.

Then the clock struck 4:30, and those in a modern Netflix audience so used to what one media onlooker called “binge watching” realized they would have to hold their breath until Friday morning at 10.

Article Continued Below

The day began with a Crown swap. Assistant Crown attorney Corie Langdon took over at the podium for Michael Callaghan and asked DeCoutere some preliminary questions to establish her background. Captain in the Royal Canadian Air Force, actor and producer. DeCoutere is well known for playing the character, Lucy, in Trailer Park Boys. She has a master’s degree in teaching, court heard.

Lucy DeCoutere and Jian Ghomeshi in a park after brunch in 2003. Defence lawyer Marie Henein on Thursday presented this photo and others to court as exhibits. (Court Exhibit)

Court was told how DeCoutere and Ghomeshi met in Banff at a television festival in 2003. DeCoutere, seemingly getting out ahead of her story before Henein began her cross examination, admitted that she and the former CBC host struck up a flirtatious email and phone relationship that included what she said were “bawdy” and “outrageous” comments at times. DeCoutere said she used “weird” slang for sexual acts in emails. One time she emailed him a comment about a “rusty trumbone,” which she said describes a sex act.

DeCoutere said she was joking in all of these email and phone conversations and not suggesting a sexual act she intended to engage in with Ghomeshi. They never had sex, she said.

Then she described her trip to Toronto from her home base in New Brunswick. They went on a date and Ghomeshi warned her about rumours associated with him. That he was funded by the Palestine Liberation Organization. That he was gay.

“I’d like to go back to my house and listen to music and hold you,” DeCoutere recalled Ghomeshi telling her. She thought that was “cheesy,” but went back anyway to see his house and get a sweater for a proposed nighttime walk. There, she noticed flower arrangements and meticulously arranged shirts, a closet that seemed organized by colour.

They started kissing and DeCoutere said Ghomeshi choked her with his hand for 10 seconds, enough that “I couldn’t breathe.” Then slapped her three times. The Crown asked if it was consensual.

“It’s impossible to consent to something you were not asked,” she told court. She remained for an hour and told court that on reflection it is “outrageous” that she stayed. One reason she stayed and sat on the couch and then kissed him goodbye was that she wanted to “normalize” the situation.

Also, “I was blaming myself for putting myself in a dangerous situation which should not have been dangerous,” she told Mr. Justice William B. Horkins.

Following the assault she described, DeCoutere said they saw each other throughout the weekend — at a barbecue at Ghomeshi’s former bandmate Murray Foster’s place, some industry parties and brunch.

(Court heard that this three-day period was Friday, July 4 to Sunday, July 6 but that struck watchers of the trial as odd since the allegations on the police charge sheet are the week before.)

She saw him again over the years, running into him at entertainment-related events. Once she appeared in her Trailer Park Boys character on CBC’s Q on the East Coast, doing a joking bit on air with Ghomeshi about finding a date for her character, possibly even Ghomeshi.

Years later, when Ghomeshi was fired in 2014 by CBC, DeCoutere told court how she reached out to media, first the Toronto Star but in total she gave 24 interviews telling her story.

“I thought oh my God, I am not the only person this happened to,” she told court.

And then Henein’s cross examination began, slowly at first with questions about whether the choking came before the slapping, the slapping before the choking, or whether there was a pause (as DeCoutere said) between the slaps. Henein raised the media interviews, who she talked to and why she talked.

Henein then displayed a series of photos to court from that weekend in 2003. DeCoutere “cuddling” in Riverdale Park, DeCoutere looking tipsy at the barbecue. Police, court heard, did not hear about many of these details which DeCoutere called “after incident contact.”

Henein: “You don’t remember cuddling with a guy who choked and slapped you?”

DeCoutere: “Memory is an interesting thing. I don’t remember these photographs being taken . . . . I don’t remember cuddling in the park. I guess because it clearly didn’t leave an impression on me.”

As the afternoon in court wore on, Henein asked questions about the celebrity that this case had brought DeCoutere, how she had resisted the normal publication ban in cases like this and how so many women, victims of sexual assault, had come forward to her saying that she was their hero.

DeCoutere said that was a pleasant surprise. “I was bracing myself and my family for online aggression.”

Henein, eye on the time, put some emails to DeCoutere, as she had done at the start of the week to the first complainant.

After she came forward with her allegations against Ghomeshi, DeCoutere emailed friends saying: “I want him f---ing decimated,” “I’m going to press charges just to get the ball rolling,” “the guy’s a s--- show, time to flush,” and “I hope he’s panic eating . . . I hope he gets chubby, really chubby.”

DeCoutere also sent an email to a fellow complainant saying the coming trial would be “theatre at its best.”

As the clock hit 4:30, the normal end of a court day, Henein alluded to something she had in her pocket or up her sleeve.

“Ms. DeCoutere I am going to do you a favour,” Henein began.

“Do you want to tell His Honour the real conversation? The one that you have not told anybody even today, even when you met with the police? Do you want to take a moment and tell the truth of the real conversation that was going on? Not the one you’ve been reporting to the media, not the one in press releases. Do you want to tell His Honour the real conversation that was going on?”

DeCoutere looked back at Henein. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“All right,” said Henein and looked at the judge. “Your Honour I wonder whether this is a good place to stop and I’ll finish tomorrow.”

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com